Here’s a near-ironclad maxim that’s worth taping above your laptop:

You’re a more confusing writer than you think you are.

You know exactly what your words mean. You can visualize every scene you write in vivid detail no matter how scant your physical description may be.

Writers inevitably project details onto the page that aren’t there. You fail to see vagueness, and fill in all the necessary gaps for passages to make sense and to make scenes vivid.

This is why precision is such a cardinal virtue in writing. It’s so important to precisely articulate what you mean when you write, possibly to the point of feeling like you’re being pedantic. Err on the side of clarity.

One key way to do this? Avoid vague catchalls that stand in for things that only exist in your head and aren’t finding their way onto the page.